September fades away and October beckons

 

 September not bound for finishes…

The day has dawned warm and windy here in Frankston, Victoria.  Meteorologists have warned about horizontal weather – so batten down the hatches.  When I get to stitching the past few days in the Meteo 2020 SAL I think it will show a dramatic change to temperatures.  And yes, that is on my cross stitch rotation for the coming week – to stitch September and see the changes.  I must also consider the extra motifs to fill in the blanks.  The end is in sight – it should be finished the first week of 2021 – and how quickly is that looming?  

Stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne has morphed into stage 3.4 with the prospect of easing to 3.2 in a week or so… I don’t know, it has become a bit too hard to follow as most of the restrictions do not affect me – apart from businesses closed, not travelling outside my 5km radius, with the exception of travel permit to head to work as an essential employee – (15 years’ experience has won out) – I don’t have school age children and pre-lockdown, I didn’t spend much time at cafés or shopping centres, but now I’m fanging to get to a restaurant to have a dinner out, to drive to the country to see my girlfriend or my sister – plan a weekend away.  I don’t like going to supermarket shopping anymore – I get anxious around groups of people now.  Not to mention that the Car Dealerships are closed down, but the benefit is that I am saving up a whopping deposit on my new car, ordered at the end of June.  When lockdown is eased and I CAN drive more than 5km, then I’ll have a new car to drive into the country to see my girlfriend and sister….. 

I always thought personalised numberplates for cars were a bit wanky and pretentious… but guess who has bought personalised plates??  Yep…and they arrived this week.  It’s not quite regulation to show numberplates on social media – but here is a snippet..  

 I must really pull my finger out and finish the hand embroidery on this quilt so I can get it sandwiched and quilted.  I’m still thinking of combination machine and hand quilting this one.

Reading back to my last post, I realised I missed last Saturday – I remember the weather was dreadfully chilly and I spent a lot of my time at the sewing machine – sewing for no real purpose, but trying a couple of techniques.   I had the idea that I needed to make a couple of mug-mats to go into my Stitchy Gift Bag of bits – so I had a go at a bit of Quilt-as-You-Go mug mats  - random stitching and these 2 are the result.  One has had the binding finished, but the other is waiting for the binding to be attached… which seems to be the running feature of my fortnight  - but I digress..

I then found a bit of patchwork that I had pieced and had the backing ready to go to be quilted…. (I have a pile of these that I walk past at least 8 times a day and it was on top of the pile) and of course that fell under my machine needle for a bit of distraction.  I’ve done all the quilting process now, and now I need to put some binding on and stitch it down.. I also need to darn in all the ends of the quilting, as I started in the middle of the project.  – So this is another project not quite finished.

Missouri Star Quilt Company Tutorial last week was a fun quilt of patches of Sewing Machines.  It caught my eye (as so many of their tutorials do)  Of course, I had to have a go… and an afternoon later, I have two more mug-mats quilted and ready to be finished off – the black one will probably end up with some felt applique – and once again, the binding is attached but is waiting to be finished down.

Halloween quilt is on hold for the moment.  I’m thinking how I want to quilt it – and because it is such a fussy pattern, I don’t want the quilting to distract from the pattern, particularly the bats.  I’m leaning onto just making some spiderwebs across the whole pattern…  Then, there will be binding to attach and stitch down…

Then of course I got side-tracked again..  and started another technique.. Storm at Sea is a really distinctive design and I spent a lot of last Sunday on quilt math… colouring in options for designs.. I didn’t want to make a whole quilt, just 4 patches together to get the idea of paper piecing…  I spent a few after-work evenings putting them together and neglecting my cross stitch, but hope to spend this afternoon pulling the paper sections off and putting the mini-quilt together.. Then I can sandwich it, quilt it, put the binding on and finish it – it can then also go into my gift pile.

I’ve ordered some Australiana fabric for a requested project, so when that arrives, will want to put that one together fairly quickly – until I have all the fabric together and see it, I do not have a direct pattern in mind, but inspiration will hit.

I have a new friend in my Sewing nook – Meet Jacky Lamby.   She has been gifted to me by a work colleague who is extremely modest about her crochet skills.  Jacky is a shelf sitter and is positioned to look over my shoulder and watch me at my sewing machine.  Jodie – thank you.  It is almost a backwards compliment to a hand-crafter to describe something as good as something you’d find in a shop…  but Jacky is so well made – I could imagine finding her in a baby-wares shop for an exorbitant price

Bit by bit, I’ve been finding little things to sort out the organisational aspects of my sewing nook.  I have a LOT of printed patterns, some freebies I printed around 2004-05 which I still want to stitch (someday), some magazine charts I’ve pulled out – rather than keeping an entire magazine.  I have sorted these into Stitchery/Cross-stitch/Patchwork.  I have them sorted into Christmas/Halloween, Sheep/Teapots, Samplers by Motif/Band/Alphabet and Blackwork.  I have been very good and have kept an excel spreadsheet to document what chart can be found in what book. 

Now those of you who have display folders (I may or may not have gone out and bought some 50 books to use), you will know that they are floppy, exasperating things to put on a shelf without some sort of restraining system.  I am using the Ikea Kallax unit and was finding the books just kept falling sideways and not sitting where I could put them clearly.  I went online to search for a solution and I think I found a simple one.  At K-Mart of all places, found a wire rack in the office solutions and this is the result.  Wonderful!  The books are staying upright and are divided into groups.  You can see the basket on the floor, with another lot of books, but I have to work out which of my cube squares I am going to abandon to put the books in…  I am using all the other squares, so this will be a difficult decision – but my room IS a work in progress

Nearly forgot a finish of sorts... My TOL 2020 SAL is nearing completion and of the 2 versions I stitched, I had to adjust the last couple of bands of the blue/yellow version because I miscounted the fabric I stitched it on.  So now it's finished and I've added the beads and sequins.  When life opens up again, this will be sent to the framer

I hope you have enjoyed my meandering today – I was listening to a new to me Floss-Tube – Jan Hicks Creates..   in this time of isolation, felt like I had a stitchy friend sitting next to me and telling me what was in her week…  I wonder if I should investigate floss-tube a bit more..   Do you have any channels you like to visit?  Please leave a comment and let me know.